A picture is worth a thousand words, as the cliché goes. But are a thousand words enough to tell the whole story?

Not in the case of the viral photograph that recently emerged from the streets of Manhattan. The image has now become a familiar one: a New York City police officer kneels beside a barefoot homeless man in Times Square and offers him a new pair of boots.

The officer, Larry DePrimo, did not know an Arizona tourist had captured the moment with her cellphone. The photo was uploaded on Facebook and rocketed around the web, garnering 1.6 million views in 24 hours and riveting the media: The officer bought the boots with his own money! The shoe store employee was so touched he gave a discount! The cop keeps the receipt in his vest as a reminder of those who are less fortunate!

The image was powerful in its simplicity. But as more details emerged, the story grew more complicated — and negative toward the man who asked neither for the boots nor for the attention that came with them.

“Heartwarming photo snapped by tourist shows NYPD officer giving winter boots to barefoot homeless man,” was the Nov. 29 headline on the UK’s Daily Mail website. One week later: “Revealed: Beggar pictured being given boots by cop has long history of arrests — and he’s NOT homeless.”

As it turns out, Jeffrey Hillman is a homeless man with a home. According to the New York Daily News, the 54-year-old army veteran has an apartment paid for by government programs and veteran benefits. He also has a “history of turning down services,” according to a statement by the New York Department of Homeless Services.

And two weeks after getting new boots, Hillman was barefoot again. He told the New York Times he had hidden the boots — “They are worth a lot of money. I could lose my life” — and although he expressed gratitude to the kind officer and thanked “everyone that got onto this thing,” he griped about his image being widely distributed without his permission.

“What do I get?” he asked the Times reporter. “This went around the world, and I want a piece of the pie.”

On Reddit, people grumbled about Hillman’s still-bare feet.

“Thanks for ruining a good story,” one commenter reacted. “Manipulative deadbeat dirt-bag who preys on the sympathy of suckers.”

But the photo’s black-and-white story was bound to get messy once the fuller picture was shaded in, according to those who work with people on the streets. After all, this story is about homelessness and people are homeless for complicated reasons, said Toronto street nurse Anne Marie Batten.

There are varying degrees of homelessness, Batten said. Just because someone has a roof over their head does not mean they have a home; they may feel unsafe there or have a mental illness that keeps them on the street, she said.

“I don’t know that poverty is very well understood,” Batten said. “I think there’s a backlash against homelessness, and for this man, whatever his back story, it has given people licence to say, ‘Oh, see, I told you so.’ ”

Glen Brown, interim executive director of Toronto’s Street Health, believes some people grope for reasons to blame the homeless for their circumstances, thereby excusing themselves and society from taking responsibility.

“I think this was an inspiring photo of an act of kindness to someone who had been dealt a bad hand,” he said. “And it’s unfortunate that the later analysis of the situation got distracted by what in particular was bad about his hand.”

Perhaps a course correction is inevitable with anything that goes viral and stays in the news cycle. Following its initial splash, the photograph has now advanced to the second stage in the lifespan of viral fame — being picked apart, reworked and combed for new information, according to Jonah Berger, a University of Pennsylvania marketing professor and author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On, a book on why things go viral.

As more contours are added, the story loses its split-second appeal.

“Part of the reason we’re sharing this is because of how amazing it seems, how counterintuitive,” Berger said. “But most of life is not as counterintuitive, as remarkable as we would like it to be.”

Whatever his reasons for being shoeless — and staying that way — Hillman is still a man walking around barefoot in the dead of winter, Brown points out.

“At the end of the day, there is still a real human being there in crisis,” he said. “So we need not give up on them.”